


nor made me feel so sweet

by canardroublard



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Angst, Casual Sex, Complicated Relationships, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Laughter During Sex, Older Man/Younger Woman, Season/Series 02, Sexual Content, implied future Kirk/Spock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-15 19:19:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18675865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canardroublard/pseuds/canardroublard
Summary: Everythinghurtsand Michael wants just one thing that makes her feel good.





	nor made me feel so sweet

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for all of season 2.
> 
> Also be advised that while I didn't feel this merited an E rating, there is brief but somewhat explicit sexual content. Proceed (or don't) accordingly.

Sometime around when Michael is lying on some asteroid, a spike of glowing-hot metal searing into her leg until all she can do is scream, she starts to suspect that this is going to be another rough year for her.

And it is. Oh, it is.

Even after the doctors heal her leg it still aches sometimes, though she can't tell if the pain comes from her flesh or her mind and she's not sure which possibility terrifies her more. Her body hurts, being around Ash hurts, searching for Spock hurts then finding him hurts in a whole new way. Everything _hurts_ and she wants just one thing, one thing that's just hers, that makes her feel good.

The first time Pike smiles at her, eyes soft and crinkled around the corners, Michael doesn't swoon. Her stomach remains uninvaded by butterflies. It's only the third time, the fourth, after she's started to realize what a good man he is, that Michael starts to catalogue every one of the numerous reasons why _that_ is a bad idea.

Pike is kind. He's funny in the dorkiest of ways, the sort of humour Michael has heard called 'dad jokes' by humans who didn't grow up with the Vulcan ambassador for a father. Her every interaction with Ash is drowning in so much history, so much emotion that even the few good times between them now still feel like slogging through a minefield. But Pike just makes her laugh, makes her smile. And she just _wants_.

He startles when she sets a hand on his one night, eyeing her in the dimmed light of his ready room, long past the end of their shifts.

"This isn't..." he begins.

"There are exactly twenty-seven reasons, by my tally, why this is a bad idea," Michael cuts in. "I carefully considered each one before this. If you have any further reasons you should speak now so we can discuss them."

Pike chuffs, ducking his head with one of those breathtakingly understated grins of his. "You really are your brother's sister," he chuckles. "And don't–" he adds, raising his hand as she opens his mouth, "I've spent enough time around Spock to know you're about to call me out on that tautology."

Michael raises an eyebrow, saucy in the only way she could figure out on Vulcan, unwilling to be distracted. "I _have_ thought this through."

Pike sobers. "I'll keep that in mind." His hand pulls out from under hers, slow enough so her hand doesn't land on the table with a hard jolt, instead sliding gently down to earth.

 

*

 

Michael expects that to be the end of it. And for a while it is.

Then Talos IV happens.

He's hollow when she finds him in his ready room. And she's overfull with the sound of her own younger voice snarling 'weird little half-breed'. She just wants to forget; he looks like he's forgotten how to be alive, and in this moment the shifting moiré patterns of their needs overlap in just right way to make something more solid than either can manage alone.

Maybe he leans in first. Maybe she does. The end result is the same.

When Michael smooths her tongue along Pike's lips he sucks in a soft _'ah'_ of a breath. His hand brushes her hip, butterfly light, barely touching down before it darts away.

"I shouldn't..." he rasps against her lips. "You just..."

Michael draws back to glare at him. "I am just a consenting adult who has thought all of this through. Remember, twenty-seven reasons? Actually, twenty-eight, I thought of another since we last spoke. I know why we shouldn't. So don't patronize me by trying to act like I don't know what I'm doing. And this isn't about what happened today."

That last part might not be the truth. If today hadn't happened would she be doing this? She doesn't know. All she knows is she can't bear another second of everything _hurting_.

Pike's eyebrows flick upwards. "Noted." He still doesn't move closer again.

"I just want..." Michael tries, gaze traversing his face, settling on the weary lines around his eyes as she feels a throb of sadness. "If you don't–"

"No," he breathes. "No, I do."

Finally he touches her, hands ghosting up her sides like she's the first solid, real thing he's had under his hands in far too long. He's tall, tall enough to send Michael up onto her toes, chasing his mouth, but she only feels dizzily unbalanced for half a second before his hands find her hips and his touch turns steady, anchoring her as they drift through space.

 

*

 

It shouldn't happen again. Perhaps it wouldn't if not for the way, as they fumble in the ready room that first time, Michael backs up against the wall until Pike gets the idea, but afterwards he sets her down and groans 'jeez, you gotta go easy on me, I'm an old man, you know. My back isn't made for this athletic stuff anymore,' self-deprecating, low with amusement. It's ridiculous, but it's the first thing to punch a laugh out of Michael in what feels like months.

That, as much as the sex, is what keeps her coming back. It just feels _good_. She feels good when she's with him. And he keeps making her laugh. The next time, when they're in his quarters, she toys with him until he's nearly incoherent, then she starts sliding down onto him and he just _comes_ , no warning, with a sputtering, indignant noise. After he's recovered he quirks a bashful yet unashamed smile at her and says 'I was just about to tell you to slow down.'

Another time he calls her 'hot stuff,' teasing and absurd but somehow sincere all at once, and Michael almost falls off him sideways she laughs so hard. So he does it again, and so she shoves him away with a hand on his face, laughing even harder when he licks her palm.

 

*

 

"Come _on_ ," Michael whines to him one night, squirming, trying to get his thumb back on her clit as his fingers trace a far too leisurely pattern inside her.

Pike grins. He always seems to be grinning around her. She tries not to read anything into that. "Hang on, hot stuff. You know there are other speeds to this apart from warp ten, right?" When Michael rolls her eyes he presses his thumb against her, just once, a brief appeasement. "Lemme try something," he murmurs, bending down to idly mouth at the swell of her breast, his eyes locked on her face. She's about to make some snarky retort about how she doesn't have all night when she feels his fingers moving in her, the touch almost searching, before he seems to find what he's looking for and his fingers curl with quiet, firm precision.

Michael's eyes fly open. "Holy _shit_ ," she almost wheezes. Admittedly her sexual history is somewhat limited but no one's ever managed to find _this_ spot. "What the _f_ –?"

"Good?" Pike's voice is lower than before, questioning.

"Yes, again," she insists with a greedy roll her hips. "More."

Lighting up, blue eyes warm with affection, Pike does it again. Michael wants to sob she feels so good. She doesn't even bother trying to dictate the pace, she just lies back to let him work until she shudders apart with a hoarse shout.

"How did you know–?" she eventually manages to ask between gasping breaths as she comes down.

"Had a hunch." His fingers slip out, making Michael moan softly as this provokes a flutter of her inner muscles. His shoulders twitch into a shrug. "One advantage of having been around the block a few more times, you learn some things on the way."

"You're not _that_ old."

"True. Would an old man do this?"

Then he bends down again but goes lower, lower, mouth working her into another orgasm, a pleased smile settling on his face when he pulls away. He's got a wiry hair stuck between his teeth. Michael's first instinct is to die of embarrassment but Pike just grins and fishes it out.

"If that doesn't happen occasionally, are you _really_ giving it your all?"

Somehow, even though she's still breathing hard and her nerves are still zinging with pleasure, Michael bursts into laughter. It's still almost as good as the sex.

Almost. His latest moves are tough to beat.

 

*

 

After her mother is yanked back through time Michael seeks him out. It's late; he answers the door in sweatpants, rubbing sleep from his eyes, but he doesn't hesitate to guide her inside, doesn't protest when she pushes him onto the bed and rides him until her legs are trembling.

It's the one night she clings to him afterwards. She presses her face into the soft fabric of his shirt so he can't see her sobbing. Once she's hollowed out she falls asleep in his arms. When she wakes he cups his hands around her cheeks like she's something precious yet not delicate. Deserving of respect without fragility. He kisses each of her swollen eyelids before his nose comes to rest in her hair and he takes a deep, slow breath. For the first time since this latest loss, Michael almost feels okay.

They never speak of it again.

 

*

 

"I know about you and the captain," Spock hurls out during one of their fights. They have so many during this year that Michael can't even recall which. Except it's Spock and he doesn't so much 'hurl' this as he calmly, rationally states it, and Michael wishes that just once he would fucking _scream_ at her. At least it would be honest.

"Good for you," she snipes back.

"I never expected you to have such poor judgement. Fraternizing with a superior officer is bad enough, but to do so with your captain is career suicide. And for what? Romance? It's hardly–"

"Career suicide? I was already convicted of _mutiny_ ," Michael nearly laughs, edging between incredulous and unhinged. "What else can they do to me? Besides, you don't get it. It's not 'romance'. I'm not in love with him. I just–I feel _good_ when I'm with him. Have you ever had that with anyone? Anyone who just makes the universe just feel a bit less horrifying for one goddamn second?"

Spock's silence gives her all the answer she needs.

"I hope you have that someday," she tells him, meaning it as spite, ending up with something more genuine. "I really do."

 

*

 

Many years later Spock remembers that fight, then thinks of Jim. _His_ captain.

Michael would never let him live that one down. He can imagine, clear as a hologram, how she'd brim with triumphant, giddy, glorious laughter.

Despite all the hurt they caused each other and the decades wasted on that hurt, he wishes she was still here to laugh at him.

 

*

 

After Boreth Pike doesn't cry. He never tells her what happened down there. All she knows, in this stolen moment when they should both be preparing for the end, for war, is that he looks more husk than human being right now. She knows he's _terrified_.

It's only when she curls around him, slow, his ribs trembling against the inside of her arms, that he manages to rasp out 'thanks', sounding like he's heard the word once decades ago and he's trying to remember how it goes. She lances her fingers into his silvering hair, freeing it from its tidy, Starfleet-approved pomade into something messily genuine, bangs brushing his forehead as his eyes quiver shut.

His hands grip her hips when she kisses him, spasming overtight before he loosens them. The sensation of Gant, no, Gant's body, holding her down, needle shimmering in its hand as it prepared to pump her full of Control goes through Michael in a scalding flash, sending her lungs gasping for air.

"Hey, whoa. What's wrong?" she hears Pike ask, the first time he's managed to string more than two words together.

Michael shakes her head. "Nothing." She tries to force her hands to stop trembling against him. It doesn't work. Pike's eyes are clearer, staring at her as if seeking answers in the set of her brow. The scrutiny is too much for her to handle without bursting into tears so she kisses him instead.

She doesn't want Pike to fix her problems, doesn't expect him to, doesn't even want him to know all of them. She slides onto his lap, legs hugging his hips, and this, _this_ is what she wants from him.

"Yeah?" he asks.

Michael nods. "Yeah."

"Okay, hot stuff. Let's do it," he gets out, weak, his mouth pulling into a half-empty evocation of his normal grin, but trying so hard to give her this moment of normality even when the universe is unravelling and she can tell he's hurting at least as much as her.

Surging forward, Michael kisses him, pouring her ferocious gratitude towards this kind, broken man into the press of her lips. His hands span the small of her back as he kisses her back, strong, just a little unsteady, like he's been tasked with holding up the whole world in the palms of his hands.

When he thrusts into her, deep, slow, it's like all of the other times. Imperfect, honest, making her feel so _good_.

He doesn't gaze down at her like it's the last time; like he needs to commit this to memory.

She doesn't gaze up at him, at those blue eyes, soft around the edges with traces past laughter, and wish that they had more time.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I swore I was busy with other fandoms. I swore I wasn't going to write for this pairing. And yet
> 
> ETA there is now a companion piece/mirror image to this fic. Check out [don't talk, just hold me closer](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18697570) if you haven't had enough angst.


End file.
